The Feral Chickens of Kauai

When we landed in Kauia, Hawaii, I waited with the bags while my wife went to pick up the rental car.  

Several small gaggles of apparently feral chickens hunted and pecked around the outside of the terminal, and as I watched them, I could not help notice that while the roosters were magnificent, the hens were small, colored like wild game birds, and had almost comb or crest.

“These chickens look a lot like Red Jungle Fowl,” I remarked to my wife, theorizing that the feral chickens of Kauai had drifted back to their ancient genetic roots.

Feral chickens are all over Kauai. They are at every parking lot, beach, and roadside pull over.  There’s an amazing number of chickens on the island, and though there is some variety, the Red Jungle Fowl look I had seen at the airport, seemed quite common all over.

Intrigued, I googled Kauai feral chickens and discovered a 2023 study entitled “Population structure and hybridisation in a population of Hawaiian feral chickens,” which is a historical and genetic analysis of Kauai’s feral chickens.  

Perfect!

Chickens are believed to have inhabited the Hawaiian island of Kauai since the first human migrations around 1200AD, but numbers have peaked since the tropical storms Iniki and Iwa in the 1980s and 1990s that destroyed almost all the chicken coops on the island and released large numbers of domestic chickens into the wild. Previous studies have shown these now feral chickens are an admixed population between Red Junglefowl (RJF) and domestic chickens. Here, using genetic haplotypic data, we estimate the time of the admixture event between the feral population on the island and the RJF to 1981 (1976–1995), coinciding with the timings of storm Iwa and Iniki. Analysis of genetic structure reveals a greater similarity between individuals inhabiting the northern and western part of the island to RJF than individuals from the eastern part of the island. These results point to the possibility of introgression events between feral chickens and the wild chickens in areas surrounding the Koke’e State Park and the Alaka’i plateau, posited as two of the major RJF reservoirs in the island….

On the island of Kauai, in the Hawaiian archipelago, chickens first arrived in AD 1200, when the Polynesian settlers brought Red Junglefowl (RJF), the wild-type chicken, with them (Kirch 2011; Thomson et al. (2014). The second known arrival of RJF onto the island occurred in 1939 when 857 Pacific RJF were intentionally released into the wild, to maintain the naturalised population, which suffered a large reduction in their numbers because of the increased hunting and predation pressure introduced by the European settlers (Pyle and Pyle 2017). To this day, chickens in Koke’e State Park are referred to as Moa and are considered to be descended from the RJF that were originally brought over by the Polynesian settlers (Denny 1999; as cited in Pyle and Pyle 2017). These are believed to be the reservoir population for the RJF alleles that are now seen in the feral populations on the island.

The weird part of this study was that it was done in Sweden from a sample of 23 feral chickens “donated by private individuals” from Kauai in 2013, and imported to Sweden.

It should be said that Kauai’s feral chicken population is unrestrained by native predators of any kind.  Only cats, dogs, people, and cars impact chicken population dynamics, and it’s clear from the number of chicks running around that reproduction is higher than even the feral cats can keep up with.  

While there are no fox, raccoon, coyote, or snakes on any of the Hawaiian islands, mongoose were introduced from Jamaica in the 1870s, first in Maui, then Molokai, Oahu, and then the big island of Hawaii.  But mongoose were never introduced to Kauai — one reason the bird population of this island is more robust than on the others.

In fact, I suspect the ubiquitous nature of feral chicken chicks takes the pressure off cat predation off native and imported song birds — a bonus.

Cool Bat Houses

Once I Was a Man, Now I am a Landlord

HENS

As long as I possessed nothing more than my bed and my books, I was happy. 

I now own nine chickens and a rooster, and my soul is disturbed. 

Property has made me heartless.

Every time I bought a chicken, I tied it to a tree for two days, to impose my address on it, destroying in its fragile memory the love of its old residence. 

I fixed my yard fence, in order to keep my birds from leaving, and to keep out the four- and two-foot predators.

I isolated myself, fortified the border, drew a diabolical line between my neighbor and I. 

I divided humanity into two categories; me, owner of my chickens, and the others who could take them from me.

I defined the crime. The world was filled with putative thieves, and for the first time I cast a hostile look from the other side of the fence.

My rooster was too young. The neighbor's rooster jumped the fence and started courting my hens and embittering my rooster's existence. I stoned the intruder, but he jumped the fence and hightailed it to my neighbor's house. 

I gathered all the eggs and my neighbor hated me. I saw his face over the fence, his inquisitive and hostile gaze, identical to mine. His chickens crossed the fence, and devoured the wet corn that I had put out. 

The alien chickens looked like criminals to me. I chased them and, blinded by rage, I killed one. 

The neighbor made a big deal of this. He didn't want to accept a compensation. He solemnly removed the chicken carcass, and instead of eating it, he showed it to his friends, recounting the tale of my imperialist brutality.

I had to strengthen the fence, increase surveillance, raise, in a word, my war budget. The neighbor has a dog that is determined to get in and kill my chickens. I'm thinking of getting a revolver.

Where is my old peace? 

I'm poisoned by distrust and hatred. 

The spirit of evil has taken over me.

Once I was a man, but now I am a landlord.   

           — Rafael Barrett, Paraguay, 1910.

My Kind Of Coffee Place

The Smell of a Rose

Wee grandson discovered the smell of a rose.

Greening Up the Knoll

All the trees busted out in full leaf while I was away. The forest below and around the house feels completely different now. Everything is very green, and the house can no longer be seen from the end of the driveway.

Happily, all 84 small trees and bushes I planted this year have put on leaves, so I’m batting 100 on that.

Hawaiia’s Coffee Strain Comes From Guatamala

PICTURED:  A coffee plantation on the south side of Kauai, Hawaii.

Legend has it that the coffee plant was first discovered in Ethiopia by a goat herder who found his charges a little too animated after eating beans from a local bush. The coffee plant (and the drink) eventually made its way to Yemen and the Arab world via the Sudanese slaves that were forced to paddle boats across the Red Sea to the Arabian Peninsula.

With alcohol banned, coffee quickly became the "drug of choice" in the Arab world. While an alcohol-besotted Europe struggled in a drunken haze through the Dark Ages, the Arab world became caffeinated and invigorated. Soon after they started the first coffee houses in the world, Arabs began creating grand libraries, universities, new mathematical equations, and amazingly complex architectural designs. Such is the power of coffee.

Coffee houses hit Europe around 1600, and there they had the same effect they had in the Arab world -- a spectacular growth in intellectual clarity and output. From the enlightened coffee houses of London grew the first newspaper divisions (business, style, overseas news, etc.), the first organized scientific associations, and Lloyds of London -- the first international insurance cartel.

Coffee consumption took off like a rocket in Great Britain, and in 1796, when the British took over Sri Lanka (Ceylon) from the Dutch, the new settlers began clearing land for coffee plantations.

By the 1860s, Sri Lanka was the largest coffee producer in the world.

In 1869, however, a lethal fungus known as coffee rust had shown up on the island causing premature defoliation of the coffee plants, and dramatically reducing berry yield.

By 1879, the rust fungus had spread across the island and into Indian plantations as well, with the result being a collapse of coffee production across the region.

Unable to grow coffee in the face of a devastating rust fungus epidemic, Ceylonese and Indian plantation owners began to rip out their coffee plants in order to grow tea.

Within a few decades, tea consumption in the U.K. had surpassed coffee consumption, and it has remained so to this day.

While tea is the national drink of Great Britain, coffee remains the national drink of the United States, where we consume vast quantities of it. In fact, though coffee is the second most internationally traded commodity in the world (after oil), the U.S. consumes one-quarter of the world's coffee beans.

Coffee came to the New World via the French, who introduced it into the Caribbean in the mid 1700s, and the Spanish, who brought coffee plants to Latin America a few decades later.

By the mid 1800s, coffee plantations had been planted in Central and South America, and these coffee plantations were greatly expanded after coffee rust decimated production in Sri Lanka and India.

Coffee was first introduced to Hawaii by way of Brazil in the 1820's.

In 1892, the “Typica” variety of coffee from Guatemala was introduced, and it did much better than the Brazilian variety.  This Guatemalan type coffee was branded “Kona Typica” in the 1990s as a marketing scheme.

In the 1980s, when Hawaiian sugarcane ceased being profitable, many cane fields were planted with coffee.  

Coffee is now the second largest agricultural crop grown in Hawaii.

No One Is Tougher — Or Truer — Than Loretra Lynn

On this day in 1960, the birth control pill is introduced in the U.S., inspiring Loretta Lynn to sing a song about it. Radio stations pull the song from the air, and outraged preachers forbid parishioners from listening to it.

Owl Box Success!

While I was away, my neighbor sent iPhone pictures of baby owls near the owl box nest located above the bee hives. I spotted the Mom a few yards from the nest box this morning, and snapped a few pictures with the newly repaired camera. I’m thrilled the owl box got occupied the first year!

Back Home to Repaired Camera

Today was another travel day, from San Francisco back to the DC area. Very glad to be home. Very glad to see the dogs.

While away, my Nikon P900 was repaired and shipped back to me from New Jersey. Seems to be fine once again.

Lots of weeding needed over next few days, but nothing too heavy. Laundry and grocery shopping planned as well.

The Hellscape of San Francisco’s Coast

Beach dunes in San Francisco, on top of the cliffs, are covered in flowers and succulents. Can you see the dog walkers in the first picture?  It’s about a 200-foot cliff, with old World War II pillboxes on top.

Lots of ravens and some pelicans joined the seagulls soaring off the cliffs. The ravens were absolutely fearless; this picture was taken with a cell phone.

Dog Parking

Yesterday was a travel day; Hawaii to San Francisco. Saw this outside a San Francisco coffee house. We need more of this.

Wee Man on the Beach

Daughter, Wee Man Milo, and Son-in-Law

Leaving Hawaii tomorrow; back to San Francisco.

The Poi Dogs of Hawaii

An earlier post showed Taro fields in Kauai, Hawaii near where I am staying. Taro is a root crop, a bit like potato, and is the base ingredient used to make Poi, a traditional staple food of Polynesia.

Poi Dogs are the original native dogs of Hawaii, and are now extinct. Their genetic stock probably originated in Indonesia, same as two other ancient Polynesian animals whose DNA still courses through the forests and farms of Kauai — feral chickens and wild pigs.

More on those animals later, but for those who want to read up on the Hawaiian Poi Dog, see >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_Poi_Dog

Beach Cave, Kauai, Hawaii

I’m in Hawaii until Sunday morning. Look at the matrix of volcanic boulders and ash holding this cliff together. The boulders are enormous, and the cliff above goes up and up and up. One good earthquake, and the whole damn thing would come down. 

Terrifying geology.

So what did I do? I went to ground under this, and lived to tell the tale!

Taro Fields, Kauai, Hawaii

Taro fields in Kauai, Hawaii, where I am vacationing. There’s so much you cannot see in an iPhone picture or video. At .40, I zoom in on the mountain in back to show a spectacular waterfall — just some of the drainage of the over 35 FEET of rain that falls annually on the interior of the island.

On the coast, it’s breathtakingly green and warm; sunny with 2-3 short showers a day. Birds are everywhere, including a ridiculous number of feral chickens.

Off the beach is coral, fish and sea turtles. Doing a big hike with my daughter, son-in-law, and grandson tomorrow. Hope I’m up to it!

White Women Voted to Disempower Women

November 2020 exit polls show that 55 percent of white women voted for Trump. This was at least a two-point *increase * for this demographic since the 2016 election.

Point:  Don’t assume people will vote in their best self-interest.

Make Heat Until They See the Light

Sometimes the first light shed on an issue comes from a burning police car. 

Or, as Howard Zinn notes:

“It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to defend the rights of poor people, women, people of color…Those rights only come alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, rebel, & violate the law in order to uphold justice.”